A friend and I tried out the MA Health Connector this week. Here are my tips for you before you start. (Warning, this is LONG!)
Before you even try, I recommend you ask your doctor's office what insurance they do (or do not) accept. Not every physician takes every insurer.
They are going to want you to have some idea of your income in 2014. They are actually trying for your income in 2015 when they ask, though. But in either case, it's a good idea to rough in your 2014 tax return. (You can just take last year's and write in the margin if you want, no one is going to see this.)
The number they're going to use is your "combined modified adjusted gross income", that is, your Form 1040, line 37, plus any non-taxable interest or social security income that shows up on lines 8b or line 20a. You'll need this number for every member of your household who files a tax return and is covered under your insurance.
The other thing you'll want before you start is the address your employers use with the Department of Unemployment. It'll be whatever is on the W-2 you got from them in 2013. If you have a new employer in 2014 take a moment to find out the address they use for payroll before you start.
When you first get to https://www.mahealthconnector.org/ you may find that they redirect you to another site and then start asking very personal questions without ever mentioning that it's been hijacked on purpose and that it's not just an elaborate phishing scheme. MA is contracting with a company called Optum to run the exchange.
Optum will require you to create a login. Write down this login and password, you'll need it for the rest of your life (until age 65 anyway.) I recommend a password manager like "LastPass", too. Also note: they'll need your email address and you'll have to use a code they send you to verify the email address, so be someplace where you can check your email at the same time as you're doing the online application. (Because, don't we ALL have dual monitors and web-access to email? Sheesh, Boston!)
They are going to verify your identity by asking you some questions that they have gleaned off your Experien credit report. That means that it's a good idea for you to go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action and get a copy of your credit report to check for identity theft. (There are three agencies, but Experien is the one being used in MA.) You want the report, not the score: you're looking it over to make sure the things in it refer to things you've done. If you haven't opened up a Victoria's Secret store credit card EVER (even once to get 10% off!) and there's one on your report, then your identiy may have been hacked. Just look it over to see if anything jumps out at you as obviously wrong.
Okay, all set with a mock-up of 2014 income, addresses for your employers, web-access to your email, and you're pretty sure your credit report refers to things that happened in your own actual life? Sit down, this is going to take an hour.
You may be eligible for a special cost-sharing plan where copayments as well as the premiums are subsidized if your combined modified adjusted gross income (see above) is below 250% of the poverty level. Because they have no way to recapture this, they want to try to make sure you aren't faking having earnings less than $29,175 for a single and $59,625 for a family of four by checking your income against what your employers reported to the Department of Unemployment. (They can't check self-employed income as far as I can tell.) Here are the Federal poverty guidelines for 2014: http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines
You are eligible for an advance on your 2015 tax credits if you expect to earn less than 400% of the poverty level, $46,680 for a single and $95,400 for a family of four. Most people will want to get this premium credit sent straight to the insurance company, but if you earn more than you expected you will have to repay the excess tax credit you received in advance. (The opposite is also true: if you go to file your 2015 tax return and discover you earned less, you'll get the difference back in your refund.) Also note: everyone getting premium subsidies over and above MassHealth is going to have to file a tax return next year to prove you were really eligible once your 2015 income is known.
Watch out for a trick: there's a place in the questionaire where it asks if you've currently got health insurance. If you used to get it through the Connector and they threw you on MassHealth because they coudn't figure out how to implement ACA for the past year, you should answer "NO", you don't currently have insurance. You may be covered, but what you really have is a temporary stop-gap thing until they could sign you up under the Affordable Care Act. This is the first time anyone in MA could do this.
If you have adult children whose coverage you cover, you're going to need to put their information in this, too.
If it bombs - and it did with me - you don't have to start over, it auto saves each page. I had several times where there were long delays but if I retried it then I'd connect.
If you do not want to go through this by yourself, you can make an appointment with a free financial counselors like Heather or Aria at Baystate Franklin, or at the Community Health Center of Franklin County, They are free, and that makes them pretty popular.
